


I See Your Face in Every Crowd

by windandthestars



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 15:38:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windandthestars/pseuds/windandthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Geographically, Midtown doesn’t cover much ground, but there are other places she could stay, places father from her old haunts and past lives.</p>
<p>What if MacKenzie was in NY instead of DC before the start of the Pilot?</p>
            </blockquote>





	I See Your Face in Every Crowd

She's back in the city for two days. She doesn't need to be here but someone had to oversee the final editing of her documentary and Charlie had offered to put her up. Strictly speaking, she's not working for ACN anymore, but they've kept in touch. 

She sets herself up in a nice suite. It's a little ritzier than where she would normally stay on someone else's dime, but he had insisted. If there was one thing about Charlie that never changed, it was his stubborn consideration for those he considered friends. She appreciates his thoughtfulness, the gentle cajoling that had convinced her to make the trip in the first place, even if it put her uncomfortably close to the AWM building. Geographically, Midtown doesn’t cover much ground, but there are other places she could stay, places father from her old haunts and past lives.

Even so, it's nice to be back in the city, any city. The noise is electrifyingly familiar. She drinks it in from the small kitchen table, fingers curled around a paper Starbucks cup. She has a meeting at eight that’s making her edgy. It’s nothing she can’t handle, even with her head spinning from the time change, but it still makes her jittery, staring a day she can only pray comes out right. There’s too many things that could go wrong, too many contingency plans running through her head, too many worries, too many calls she wants to make back to the Middle East.

She's promised to meet Charlie for lunch. When they talked the night before she had asked him to pick the restaurant. There’s too many choices for her to pick just one place, too many options she’s not used to having. So while she has no say in where they’re meeting, she’s hoping for some place halfway between where she is and that damn building where she knows Will's face is plastered on the wall.

She’s made sure to insist Charlie met her at the restaurant. She had expected more meddling, or at least a suggestion that she stop by the office. Charlie, however, was happy to acquiesce, two days in town wasn’t good for anything but another argument anyway. Even the email she had sent Will was devoid of its usual emotion.

She spends the morning, absconded in minor details and technicalities. She doesn’t mind this kind of work, but she’s glad for the fresh air when she finally makes her way outside. The restaurant isn’t far, so despite the chilly spring weather, so opposite of what she’s used to, she walks.

She grins at the familiar yet ever changing billboards as she turns off Sixth and the Square comes into sight. She’d caught a glimpse of it on her way to the hotel last night, but this is the first proper look she’s had in over two years. 

She stands there for a moment, gawking like a tourist, the crowd around her impatient, jostling her as she takes it all in. It’s not beautiful in the traditional sense, but it’s hers in a way that makes her achingly homesick. It’s one of the last memories that hasn’t been eroded by sand and tears.

The light changes again, the red warning fading, and she lets herself be pushed across the street in the crowd. She’s not paying much attention to where she’s going, she could find her way around with her eyes closed. She’s still caught up in the lights and the sounds, the city life she had so easily left behind.

She’s caught up in it all until she stops dead. Her first thought is to shrink back into the crowd and disappear. It wouldn’t be hard to do with the noonday rush, but he’s already seen her, a quick glance that leaves her skin tingling. He doesn’t seem convinced it’s her, in fact he seems not to see her at all, and yet there’s that recognition, he’s twenty feet away and they’ve never been farther apart.

She opens her mouth to call out, but the light changes and he turns away to cross the street, shoulders slumping beneath his dark leather jacket.

“Will,” she whispers, but he’s already gone, disappeared into the fray.

When Charlie shows up, it’s Will she wants to talk about: the show, and the news he hasn’t been covering. Charlie, to his credit, lets her talk, carefully steering clear of any effort to guide the conversation until he senses she’s talked herself out.

“You want to come home.” He finishes for her, pulling free the sentiment it’s taken her over an hour to find.

“I’ll have to call Jim.” She says in the closest reply she can find to an answer as Charlie reaches over to pat her hand clenched on the table.

“I’ll find you something.” He promises. “I may have just the job for you.”


End file.
